


The Guilty Ones, Dear Old Mum and Loving Dad

by Dreamsoda



Series: Car Ride to Hell [1]
Category: Homestuck, Original Work, i am my own fandom - Fandom
Genre: Original Character(s), not VERY homestuck..
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 09:52:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12363123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreamsoda/pseuds/Dreamsoda
Summary: He was quiet for a long time. The air felt hollow, like a house that had once been filled with so many things was now empty of everything but memories. Time moved on and someone else moved in, maybe years later they’d return and remember, “Maybe I don’t want you to go.”





	The Guilty Ones, Dear Old Mum and Loving Dad

She glanced at him, less worried about the empty road and more worried about the moody brother in the passenger seat. He was looking fast and far away, probably close to ten thousand miles away, and she had no idea how to say she was sorta sorry. When it became apparent that he was icing his cold shoulder she returned her gaze to the road. Who cares…she didn’t need to explain anything to him. He was really only here so her dad couldn’t have her arrested for stealing the car (if she was caught). She definitely wouldn’t put it past her dad to have her pit dragged back to his arms and that was the only reason she needed Alex to be there…

She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel and glanced over at him every time he took a big annoyed breath. It was kind of annoying that it was pitch black everywhere, she couldn’t really read a person in the dark. One in the morning had the annoying tendency to be pitch black, it seemed. The desire to see what was going on over in the passenger seat was eating away at her more than the prospect of running away. She kind of thought that she and Alex—her little baby brother—she thought they were…friends…cohoot’rs…co-conspirators, as much as a lil bro and big sis could be. She didn’t want him to be mad at her now. The looming prospect of him dropping her off six feet from nowhere and never looking back was starting to look like an actuality instead of residual paranoia.  
She’d brought him along, A) to keep her dad from tracing the car and B) for goddamn company. The asshole had clammed up and she was almost alone with her burning paranoid fears save for the other insomniac cars lousing along. Radio had fizzed ten feet out of Chicago and she didn’t have the patience to dig around and find another station. There’d be no personal toons as this wasn’t the 90s and no one had CDs anymore and, to boot, she’d made Alex leave his phone behind when they left. Her phone was in 963 itty bitty lil pieces in the pit of the fire place.

It was, uh, probably overkill, she admits, but at that point she had been getting sorta paranoid. She justified the paranoia by telling herself that it was totally not a blow to low for her dad to track her phone halfway across the galaxy somehow. There were a lot of things she wouldn’t past him, nothing, actually!

“You know,” Alex had said while Cecil was stomping her phone into the rocks, “He could just ask the phone company to send them your texts for the last month.”

She’d stomped mid curb and stared at him. This hadn’t even occurred to her. The phone was already on its way to fulfilling its dream of being a puzzle and she hadn’t even thought that phone companies save texts. “We texted in Chinese.”

“Okay, you got me there. There’s totally not a native born Chinese woman living in our house who might be able, and willing, to translate your texts.”

It had certainly put the scare in her. She almost called everything off right then and there, but Alex had stepped in and said he might not be able to, “I was just saying shit, Cecil, it’s unlikely he’ll get the texts, okay? Anyways, won’t you be dead by the time he gets them.”

“Dead to him, yeah.” She wasn’t sure she believed the sloppy cover up, but by the time texts could be found Cecil and co-culprit wouldn’t be in Buttfuck Nowhere, Minnesota anymore, she’d be in Better Than There, Washington. The texts, she hoped, would only lead him to Minnesota, not all the way to Washington.

Anyways, she’d smashed the phone. Overall she felt her paranoia in demolishing the damn thing was at least a little justified. Alex had found the keytracing virus on his phone when he was datamining and then he stole Cecil’s phone and, sure enough, there was one on her phone, too. He removed the viruses and returned their phones. They both knew how the viruses got there, and, at least for Cecil, why it was on her phone, but neither of them could really figure out why honor-roll-honor-nerd Alex had had his phone infected, too. They reasoned that it had been residual, that daddio had put one on her phone and then put one onto Alex’s phone for Justin Case.

Ironically that had been the snapping point for Cecil. Kind of hilarious, considering. Of all things he did, wiretapping her phone was probably the tamest crime daddy had committed in that damn house.  
And after they found the virus there was nothing that could keep her from trying to escape. She hardly even sat in the house unless there was some threat of pain to something she loved. She’d spend the night in a park or at a bar or anywhere that would let her baby face in. There were other things, too, things she’d been doing for months like collecting money, planning escape routes, meticulously planning days, memorizing names, directions, numbers, calculating expenses. She’d found some sort of peace in just the planning alone. Like the idea of freedom was enough to curb her appetite for actual freedom.

She discovered, quickly, that you don’t get away with playing if-I-can’t-see-you-you-can’t-see-me with your problems. The house was a black hole and it would destroy indiscriminately, pulling everything in and never letting it go. The further she got from it she found it hard to describe how terrifying it was, hard to believe that the furiously wild pull was real. When she was two hours home-free the concept of jumping out windows and hiding in bushes didn’t really seem like a better alternative than being there for one more minute? But when she was in the jaws and the teeth she’d indulge in a power struggle between a door.

Two hours home-free and she still didn’t know if there was a place far enough away in the galaxy that could protect her from hem ljuva hem, but there she was going 80 down a highway in the middle of the night, trying her damndest.

Rationally hiding in Chicago would have been the easiest solution. Such a big city and so close to home, but he’d found her before and he’d find her again. The circling coldness dragged everything into the pits of its wooden body. The only way to get away from something that corrupted absolutely was to run.

And run she did.

It was a solid plan, that is, running. There were loose ends, however…she glanced over at the loosest one, curled up with gangly legs all every which way, waves of angry rolling into her like residual radiation from an super nova.

“You know,” he had pointed out to her, sitting on her bed back in their house, watching her shove things in duffle bags, “We could watch Braveheart twice instead of doing this. Twice.”  
“If you want to watch Braveheart so badly stay home and watch it!” She’d snapped at him, throwing something at him, “Watch it thrice for all I care.”

Although it’d only been a few hours since she’d bit that at him, she felt a tinge of shame for snapping at someone who’d done so much for her. In her defense she was a little hyper stressed; her plans had been jerked ahead by one day because mommy and daddy just had to go to the lake on Saturday instead of Sunday. Everything was suddenly slightly disrupted in every single way and she really didn’t need him sassing her.

He’d stormed out on her after that and it really seemed like he was prepared to stay home, fully ready to turn his back on her one last time. He stood his ground for ninety whole minutes while she shoved her stuff into bags and then into the car. It was long enough that she was deeply concerned that, his angry, “Fuck off, I’m not doing this for you, you fucking brat, get lost for all I care.” was going to be his last words to her before she fell off the map.

And she didn’t want her, “Yeah, that’s the idea, genius!” to be hers.

When her shit was all about stuffed into every crevice of the car he came crying down the stairs with all his big, manly words, “You aren’t doing this alone and I don’t want you to get into something that you can’t back out of.” And, an hour out of Madison, that had been his last real words to her.

“I don’t need you to protect me,” was the last thing she’d said back, not that she was entirely proud of it saying it considering he’d always been pivotal to everything working out okay in the end.  
There were a lot of things Cecil would never get back, a lot of ‘I love you’s and dinner plates, but he was just a stick shift away, she could take it back.

“Hey, Alex?”

She didn’t need his 100 pounds of bravery. She’d been in the pit of something she couldn’t back out of for seven years straight, like he didn’t know this. Where did he get off thinking that this bull run was the problem and not the demon at home sitting on a throne of bloody sheets and pillows. There wasn’t a lot that could happen at this point that she hadn’t already stabbed her quill into, experimenting with all the different types of inks she could use to blot out her life.

It was quiet in the car, so much so that Cecil doubted she’d even spoken at all. He hadn’t responded and there was no echo of her voice for her to hear, had it been real? Did she really say that or was it all in her mind?

A grunt of complete indifference broke the ice.

She glanced at him as much as driving would afford. That sounded like a reply? She probably had really said something, right?

He sat up suddenly, “What??” He snapped angrily.

Cecil glanced at him, confused at his outburst, but not really Cecil wasn’t really there.

“What?!?” He screeched, “CECIL WHAT!!”

“Sorry, sorry, just,” she shook her head, snapping to attention, “Sorry—yeah! Yeah, that’s what I wanted to say. Yeah, sorry.”

He didn’t respond. Instead he turned himself right-a-way in his seat, legs on the ground, face furiously forward.

“Yeah, sorry,” she repeated, “It means a lot to me that you’re here, you didn’t have to and it means a lot to me.” Cecil waited a few minutes for him to respond, she actually did. She had a tendency to babble and the shy kiddo would get angry before butting in on her. She was waiting for him to speak up, defend himself, but when he never spoke up she just continued on anyways, “Aaaand I’m sorry, I really am. It was just sorta tense earlier, I wanted to get out of the house as quick as possible and you were sorta, I don’t know, I just was tense. I’m sorry. I’m sorr—”

“Are you?”

“I—uh—what?” She managed a look at him and to her startled surprise, he was looking right at her, too. Before the sudden eye contact unsettled her enough, she returned her gaze back to the road ahead of her, “Yeah, I’m…pretty sure I’m sorry. Uh, what—that felt pretty accusatory, do you…have something on your mind?”

“Yeah, I have something on my goddamn mind.”

She waited, and waited (and waited) until she heard him shift back around to look forward again, but he never really answered himself, so she filled the space. “Uh, okay? Mind sharing with the class what’s on your mind?”

“I don’t really think you’re sorry. You think you’re sorry, but you don’t give a shit, you’re not really sorry.”

“Excuse me?? Yeah sure, whatever Freud,” she grumbled, gripping the steering wheel until her knuckles were white, hunkered down. She suddenly found herself missing the silence. “Tell me more, how does that make you feel?”

“YOU DON’T CARE!!” He screamed, making her swerve.

She smacked him and he smacked her back—they slapped at each other haphazardly, the car swerving jerkily until she grabbed his puny little wrist and twisted it, putting an end to it.  
“OW—ow ow—Cecil—stop—”

“Yeah?? I’m driving you piece of shit! Let’s just pretend that if the decibel level in the car gets above a certain decibel level we’re going to explode.” She let go of his wrist and grabbed the steering wheel again, “What don’t I care about? Ohhh, you poor baby, do I not care that you’re not asleep, or reading your dumb books? Do I not care that I’m driving too fast or what??? What don’t I care about??”

“You’re leaving us.” He snapped, a slap of emotion behind every word, “Yeah, you—you don’t care that you’re leaving us all behind to rot. What about mom?? What about our sisters?? Rose? Alana? ME??? What’s going to happen when he finds out you robbed him and ran off with some guy??”

Yeah, she definitely missed the silent treatment.

“You know—did you think about what our lives were going to be like after you left? It’s going to be worse and you don’t care. What about me?? What about us?? Do you ever fucking think about who and what your actions affect??”

“Not really.”

“You’re just going to leave us?”

“That was the plan, yeah.”

“What if he goes back to doing it to mom?”

“Good for her.”

“You don’t care??”

Cecil wanted to bang her head against the steering wheel, “Hey Alex,” she said, rather smoothly for how biting mad she was, “I don’t know if you noticed, and it’s honestly totally fine if you hadn’t, but, uh, if I go back there he goes back to DOING IT TO ME!! What a concept??? A wild fucking concept…I don’t give a shit—you know, Alex, I’m sorry that Alana and Rose might have to cry once in their lifetime and you might fail a test, I’m really fucking sorry. But I—I’m done with it, I’m done being your scapegoat, done letting you use me as your human meat. I don’t care if he goes back to mom because she let it fucking happen to ME! You know—everyone in that family was so concerned with themselves, no one cared that he zeroed in on me.”

“It’s called Target-Child Selection,” Alex interrupted, matter of fact.

“I know what it’s CALLED—!” She nearly screamed at him, forgetting her own decibel rule, the car jerking to the right slightly. She exhaled hard and loud, tipping her head back as she did it, “I know what it’s called, Alex. You know how I know? Cuz I’m the Target-Child. And you know what else I know? No one else gave a shit that I was the Target-Child until I decided I didn’t want to be it anymore. I’m trying to save my own life, but poor wittle babies might feel some pain for once in their lives. Boo-hooty-hoo. I better come back and make sure nothing bad ever happens to you guys, right? Me, a little teenager, is the last defense a grown ass woman has from her husband. I better go back!! Lest she might get a little hurty boo-boo on her conscience! She might get a little goddamn karma.”

He crossed his arms and didn’t say anything.

Cecil was pretty done, she pushed against the steering wheel and into the seat, holding it at arm’s length, “You know, Alex, if you’re lucky he’ll move on. If you’re not lucky, and I’m really sorry, for you, for Alana, for Rose, but I don’t give a shit about mom AND as an added bonus, I’m not talking about this anymore because this isn’t what I wanted to say—I just—Why?? Can’t you just let me tell you I’m sorry without making it a big deal? I’m sorry I yelled at you, I’m sorry now! I’m just fucking sorry, but, like, can you let me have this one thing? This one tiny thing? You—you don’t even have to let me have it for very long! One day, a few hours, just let me have a little taste of what you’re gorging yourself on?”

“So is that what this is? A taste of our own medicine??”

“No! No! It’s not like that—I just can’t do it anymore, Alex, I can’t! I don’t want to live my life like this anymore! I—I thought—we—we’re cohoot’rs, Alex. Co-conspirators!!” She tore a glance at him in the dark, waving an arm between them. Her voice was wet with emotions and his steel-trap had warbled. “I just wanted to say, and mean it, that I’m sorry. I don’t want you to forget about me. I want you to know that—that it really meant a lot to me that you wanted to come with me and that protection mess. It meant something to me, I just wanted to tell you I was stressed and this doesn’t have anything to do with me hating you or anything—I just—I can’t look out for you for the rest of my life! I need to look after me for a little. Can you just let me have this?”

He was quiet for a long time. The air felt hollow, like a house that had once been filled with so many things was now empty of everything but memories. Time moved on and someone else moved in, maybe years later they’d return and remember, “Maybe I don’t want you to go.”


End file.
